


A Ribbon in the Midst of the Vale

by LadyKhat



Category: sansan asoiaf
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 15:51:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20428502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKhat/pseuds/LadyKhat
Summary: At the pre-Tourney feast in the Vale, Sansa/Alyane decides who gets her favor.





	A Ribbon in the Midst of the Vale

Sitting beneath the wall scone with its fire shining in her hair, Alayne’s eyes fell upon the company of men there. They slipped past the wedded, the betrothed, the ancient, the dismal. She must find someone who would not pester her after she bestowed her favor on him, yet he must be a strong contender. Else she’d be unable to hold her head as high as she liked.

No Vale men, then. That alone cut her choices down three quarters, even less. Across the hall she saw Myranda dancing, her steps light and sure. Alayne had never learned who she had been wedded to before the girl killed him. Now that she thought about it, that was odd. 

The older girl was partnered with the handsome younger Sutherland. She wondered if Myranda had had a change of heart concerning the Sisterman. Not likely, though. His sealskins, cold seawater baths and webbed feet hardly whet the appetite of Lady Myranda Royce. Harrold Hardyng did. 

Did Lord Nestor’s daughter want Harry the Heir for his future prospects? Or did she want him? Maybe this went beyond hurt feelings . . . in which Alayne may be in deeper waters than she thought. _But what can be deeper than the cut that chops off your head?_ She could think of nothing. 

The beheading would be public so tales could be spun and told and retold. Songs may even be sung. Maybe she could ask for a cup of sweetmilk to help her lay her head down on the block. Laughter bubbled up out of her and Lady Waynwood turned to see, looked her over, and turned back.

Well, Alayne had stolen one man from Randa and she didn’t intend to steal another. A woman could change her mind, after all. Besides, could the Sistermen joust? Or were they just pieces to be moved around in Littlefinger’s game? No Sistermen either, she decided. Three more down. And none from the Finger’s or the other isle’s either.

She spotted Ser Lothor and thought about him but she didn’t want to interfere with any plans he may have for Mya. Or any plans Mya may have for him. If any. Then there was Mychel Redfort. Despite Mya’s scowl, there had been straw in her hair. Had the girl been willing or unwilling? She had no hint if the mix was volatile yet, but Alayne didn’t see herself playing well in that game.

“If you cannot win it, do not get in it. If it doesn’t feel right . . . scat,” Littlefinger had told her one day as he wound a lock of her hair around and around his finger, coming closer and closer to her cheek. So she did. Scat. And she took her hair with her. His finger looked stupid poking the air. “That would be foolish,” she’d said while striding over to the side table where she poured herself a glass of lemon water and returned to place it on his desk. 

Then she walked around him and settled herself in a chair before his desk, crossed her legs and took a sip of water. He had stared at her the whole time, bafflement mixed with vexation written all over his face. Alayne’s father. The man had no idea what to do. 

Sansa would like that, she knew.

_OhSansa! Where are you?_

Her eyes roamed on and on, passing by a decreasing number of likely men until finally lighting on Ser Byron. Ser Byron the Beautiful she had heard him called. And he was. Beautiful. Being in her father’s employ, he would not bother her. At least she could think of no reason why he should. 

As she thought of a way to approach him, he, Ser Morgarth and Ser Shadrich were standing apart in deep discussion. Ser Byron’s fists were half-clenched but that was the only hint she had that he was upset. His face remained courteous.

His mouth twitched and the man abruptly turned on his heel, and strode towards the doors. Alayne rose, gathered her skirts, begged her pardons and followed, weaving her way between men, women and dogs. 

By the time she made it outside, he was almost out of sight. “Ser Byron!” she called. There were a few others about, but they paid her no heed. He stopped and whirled, his long thick blond locks settling on his shoulders and beyond. _A woman could get lost in those tresses,_ she thought. _Some woman could._ She quickened her steps.

“My lady,” he said as he came back to meet her. His face was full of inquiry.

“I am here to cheer you up. Would you let me?” She did not know where that had come from, but it felt right.

For answer he smiled, took her hand, tucked her arm into his own and began strolling. She looked up at him. For a moment . . . for a moment she thought she saw grey eyes staring back at her. _No. It’s just a trick of the light._ The castle had been lighted on the outside too, along with some of the outbuildings, with torches, lamps, kettles and braziers everywhere.

“Were you enjoying the festivities, Ser Byron? Before your conversation put you out of sorts.”

“Aye. Especially the dancing part,” he said, merriment in his voice. And something else.

_Was that a rasp?_ Alayne kept her brow smooth and said, “I too enjoyed it. Did you enter the lists? For the tilts, I mean.” Ser Shadrich had declared for the melee she remembered.

“My first match is against Ser Harrold Hardyng, seventh place.”

His eyes were still blue. And he was no taller no matter the rasp. It was like half a rasp, anyway. No, it was like the first part was Ser Byron and the second . . . 

He led her across the yard, onto a path. They were headed towards the godswood she saw. 

“Is this where you were going?” 

“There’s something about the place. Makes a man want to be still.” There was no rasp either.

“Aye, and that’s why I’m here,” she said playfully.

He brought them to a halt. “Sweet lady.” He kissed her hand. “The moment you joined me my wretchedness fled.” He returned her hand to his arm and resumed walking, a small smile playing on his lips. He made her feel like smiling. And so she did.

“You pray to the old gods? Where might you be from?”

“Near Lannisport. When I heard the Lord Protector had need of strong arms, I made my way to Gulltown forthwith.”

“And why the old gods, good ser? The Seven are revered where you’re from.” 

They came to a stop a little distance in front of the weirwood. The tree had thrived here, it’s great trunk with its many branches stretching out far and wide. The roots alone matched the girth of some of the surrounding trees. 

The leaves were ruby red hands and reflected orange and yellow and a bit of blue from where the fires were fed with oil. For there were torches, braziers and lamps here too, to light the way for those who prayed to the old gods.

Alayne made to move closer to the tree, but he pressed her arm tighter against his body . . . so she stayed and admired the tree from where she was. She could feel the hard muscle that lined his trim waist against her arm, through the layers of her garments and his.

She said, “The face is frightful.”

“My maester gave me an ancient book depicting weirwood trees and their faces, those belonging to the great houses. Would you like to hear?”

She nodded, although he hadn’t answered her question yet. She supposed he would get to it.

“The progenitor . . . the trees were grown from his dead body. Not the same man that built the house, unless ancestry can be traced back twelve thousand years. Too, a man could be slain and the tree planted in his heart. The tree cares not long as there is nourishment. Have you ever seen a weirwood sapling, my lady, or held the seed in your hand? Or even a shoot?”

Alayne shook her head, caught up.

“You would be right to see many offspring surrounding a heart tree, but you’ve seen no such thing. For the most part, below the Wall the heart trees stand alone in their godswoods.”

“And . . . no other trees grow near to it.” Sansa had visited the godswood at home. It was its hot springs and its outer woods with wide open spaces that she loved. She’d only come near to the white tree bearing red hands, standing in half shadow and half sun with its ancient melancholy face, with her father or other family. Her real father. Still, there was something earthy and natural about it.

“Only the Children of the Forest and mayhaps the First Men know how to beget another weirwood,” he said. “Could be they spliced a tender young branch off another tree, nourished it to root, and planted it. That way all heart trees come from one, and all grow with the taste of blood in its corpuscles. There were sacrifices made to the weirwoods long ago, in another time when the trees were well fed. Same as once, man spoke the name of the heart tree.”

“Weirwoods have names?” she said, astonished.

He indicated the tree before them. “Behold, the great Ajax. The one at Deepwood Motte is Yzuma. Three Singers is what men call the three at Highgarden, but they were planted by Garth Greenhand and are called Trimurti. The mighty tree at Wolf’s Den is named Iss, and Xao is the heart tree that sits by the black pool at Winterfell.”

She closed her mouth.

“The names of the rest have fled, except for three or four more I can work to recall. Maybe if I see them, they’ll come back to me. I never learned them all anyway.”

Xao. She and those who came before her should’ve been calling it that all along. Or maybe there was a reason why men failed to utter Xao, Ajax, Yzuma, Trimurti, and Iss. It could be said the name of the tree went hand in hand with sacrifice. With food. The trees were most like ravenous after all this time. An execution here, a dying soul there, and any family burials near to its roots if good fortune shined.

“This book. Where is it now?”

Ser Byron’s eyes glittered as he stared at the tree. “It fell from my brother’s hand into the fire and burned.”

Alayne had no words for that, though it reminded her of . . . 

So she turned to the tree again and stared at its face. Ajax screamed at her. Perhaps the founder had died angry. An oblong circle was his mouth, a raw open maw. His eyes were prominent, big and wide and terrible. Red sap poured out of his eyes past its nose and onto his mouth in thick strings, down to the roots of the tree where it pooled like blood.

Ser Byron gestured to the tree. “The old gods call to me . . . and one of the Seven,” he said. “Once, I had a debacle that was nearly my end. Then, a holy man told me that before thirty years, sometimes men without houses flounder and stumble about with skin over their eyes, rising and falling, falling and rising.”

“Men without houses? You mean a place to belong? A place to come from?”

“All that and more. It means a woman, my lady. A woman grounds a man, and the woman is the man’s house where he can succor, for he needs all of the woman, and all of her ways.”

Once, she would’ve felt the red creep to the roots of her hair, but she was bastard-brave now and hard as stone. “I . . . I like that counsel myself.” 

He stood there and watched her, his eyes the color of evening sky on a long endless day.

She had never seen a man as splendid as Ser Byron. His breath and depth had most like kept the other boys from teasing him about his beauty. The gods had smacked their lips when they made this one. 

The way his hair moved around his face, the sun colored strands spreading where ever they needed to be. His. Blue. Eyes. What was that in his eyes . . . did he . . . want her? Sansa or Alayne? And why did that even occur to her? 

The invisible intensive rays shooting from his stare, she could feel it all over. Is this what lust felt like? She tingled . . . and she ached . . . and Alayne took a half-step towards him . . . 

. . . and back on the stillness of the serpentine steps, back with its stripes of light and darkness spilling across his face, she was a older woman fully flowered. And when he asked her if she liked wine, _true wine_ . . . when he told her that wine was all a man needs . . . or a woman, she said, “Why don’t you have a taste and see if I go down courteously . . . or if I claw and lash at your throat?”

There would be no stopping him, she was sure of it.

Then . . . Alayne shook herself and blinked her way clear of the vision.

She had a piece she need play, so she best get on with it. Ser Byron wasn’t swearing his troth to Alayne Stone, either. It was just an eye thing. 

He hadn’t shared what he meant by his end, so she said, “You’re thirty? And you’ve come upon a transformation since?”

He nodded and seemed to have returned to himself too. “For most of my life I’ve lived with a feeling that nearly routed me. Its name is rage. I need the rage and it needs me, but now we have a workable truce.”

A warrior’s words. Alayne felt calm and peaceful with this man. And before her eyes for . . . for a heartbeat he was taller. Taller with long black hair brushed to the side to mitigate the left side of his face! She gasped.

“My lady. Is aught amiss?” he asked, concern in his voice. Concern in his face. Concern in his posture.

She stared up at him heart pounding. At this tall but not as tall as him blue eyed blond haired man who dressed not simply but oh so elegantly. This man who gently held both her hands, caressing the pulse of her wrists, the meat of her palms and her fingers with his strong, big hands. This man who was waiting for an answer.

_I’m thrusting him onto Ser Byron, that’s all!_ She could not say why she would do such a thing. Why she _kept_ doing such a thing. The two men were as different from one another as . . . 

And she was so so tired of waiting for him. He wasn’t coming, he wasn’t! That was something Sansa Stark prayed for, hoped for. Not her. _I must . . . Alayne must do for herself._

_. . . the serpentine   
. . . A mummer’s farce_

The best lie contained elements of the truth, her father had said. “You . . . you just reminded me of someone I used to know. It is nothing, ser.” She gave him a vibrant smile. In fact, it wasn’t a lie at all. 

He gave her hands a squeeze and released them.

“Ser Byron.” She suddenly realized she did not know if that were his first name or his last, but it was too late for that now. “I . . . I would be grateful if you wore my favor in the tourney.” Her fingers were steepled in front of her. Please, _please._

He smiled. The smile reached his eyes like all his smiles did. Ser Bryon dipped his head, his full mane of blond hair tumbling about his shoulders and beyond. 

With a big grin on her face, she started tugging at the autumn gold ribbon hidden between her breasts. It was a tangled mess inside its own folds and her bodice from her pushing and poking it out of sight throughout the evening. So she found an end and carefully pulled it out a few inches at a time, some two feet and more of it.

“It’s coming, I just . . .”

It was one and a half inches wide and was long enough to fit around a muscular upper arm twice and then some. She had tied it about her thigh to make sure of it. Wrapped twice, the favor would be seen in all its glory set off against armor plate. 

Embroidered on the ribbon were unicorns, mammoths, great hounds and direwolves, with a jager between each. She had thrice sewn each animal in black, with brown tendrils and olive leaves behind every one for the length of the ribbon. 

Each version of the four animals held a different posture. Both the mammoth and the unicorn were shaggy, the unicorn less so, for it was a far north creature too. How else to survive the cruel bitter cold of always winter? 

The ribbon was trimmed in a shiny olive green thread that glittered in the light. The thread was a delicate wire, soft enough to wear against bare skin. The jagers too she had done in olive. When the design was complete, she’d lined the ribbon with a strip of fine raw linen and finished it off on both ends and the sides. All in all, the colors were beautiful together: autumn gold, black, brown and olive. 

Except for . . . the magical red horn of the rearing unicorn. The curved red tusks of the charging mammoth. The lolling red tongue of the running hound. And the flashing red eyes of the leaping direwolf. 

Look, and the red could be seen to clash with the gold, the black, the brown and the olive . . . yet and still, the red looked as if it belonged. That was how she had felt when she made it. That was how she felt now. 

As she was pulling, she quickly fingered a hound, its legs splayed in a full out sprint.

When she was at the Eyrie, Alayne had found the ribbon and threads tucked inside a silk bag in a drawer of her wardrobe. The top lifted up and though its access wasn’t obvious, she could not say it was hidden. Just forgotten. 

There were needles too, made of a metal she did not know, all thrust into a pincushion along with a myriad of jewel topped straight pins of many colors fixed in their own pincushion and bag. She had stuck the needles in with them. It seemed their proper place.

There was a huge needle, too, long with a two-part handle of some black wood. Its color was milky moonlight glow. In the middle of the handles the needle parted into two bends and that was what the handles held to. On the top was a hollow oblong circle where the metal rejoined, the circle much like Ajax’s scream, like the piece could be hung from leather or chain. 

She put it in her hand between her middle finger and the ring and closed her fist around the handle and the needle. It would not slip either for the wood was ridged. She looked at the weapon, about five inches of thin deadly sharp tipped metal. Her weapon.

Last, she’d pulled out cutting shears made of the same strange metal, soot grey broadly shot through with red like the small needles and straight pins, with tiny weirwoods on the wooden handles. The heart trees were all different, every one down to the faces, some gently worn from handling. And she’d cut her finger on a blade. She’d never done so with cutting shears before. She could see ripples in all the metals. Ripples like Ice. 

Alayne had shown the ribbon and olive thread to Gretchel and asked if they had come with Aunt Lysa’s things, but the old woman swore she had never laid eyes on the notions before. Guest gifts from the Eyrie. Alayne gave silent thanks.

Inch by inch her fingers tugged, eased and cajoled until finally triumphant, she pulled the ribbon free and gazed up at Ser Byron. His eyes had slipped to her breasts and this time she did blush. “It was the only place I knew I wouldn’t lose it,” she said with a little laugh. 

He looked back at her a moment and fingers barely brushing hers, carefully took the favor from her and wound it tight about four big fingers. “The honor is my own, sweet lady. I will wear it well.”

_His eyes! His eyes are grey once more!_ Grey like a tremulous northern storm gathering . . . gathering until the skies let loose with the lashing of rains punctuated by terrible rumbling thunders and crackling lightnings. His face was but a blur. 

She blinked and blinked and her breath silently caught in her throat, but he did not see or hear her as he tucked the ribbon behind his fine sapphire blue doublet. 

Then his eyes were evening sky after a long endless day when he looked at her. And his face was Ser Byron the Beautiful. She remembered to breath, and favor bestowed, took his arm to return the way they came.

_. . . it’s him!   
. . . No, it’s not . . . though I   
. . . you saw his hair, his height. You whipped up prose about the grey of his eyes . . . it was lovely  
. . . I . . . I never saw his face   
. . . nor I. It must be some sort of enchantment   
. . . An enchantment? Are you mad?  
. . . kiss him then, and say what you feel . . . lips smooth on one side. . . a bit of rough on the other  
. . . I won’t  
. . . I will  
. . . What a tangle that would be. I thrust him onto the man . . . he didn’t ask for it  
. . . ‘what mighty tangles this magical tale has strove, when the tangles of magic chose to enter your trove’  
. . . Magic cleaves to stories and to fairy tales and to songs. Like what your eyes say they saw  
. . . ask the maester and we shall see if my eyes were playing tricks on me  
. . . They were! The lights!  
. . . even his mouth twitched once, and you heard his rasp . . . tell me you didn’t. I heard it clear as a saw on stone! Do you refuse to go to the maester?   
. . . For once and for all, SEW YOUR SILLY MOUTH SHUT SANSA STARK! HE IS NOT—  
. . . —I KNOW WHAT I SAW ALAYNE STONE! No lies between me and you Alayne . . . no more lies. The truth shall free us . . . the lies only serve to entangle_

Leaving the godswood, the air was fresh, clean and crisp as they walked in companionable silence. From time to time they would look at each other, and she smiled at him and he smiled at her. 

And she felt strangely . . . all right. She had not felt that since Sansa had run to Cersei and told her of Ned Stark’s plans to send his daughters back to Winterfell. Back home. Back when Sansa had been a green girl . . . and fool to boot.

_. . . I do not know this man. Still . . . something is pulling me to him  
. . . have we not yet come to a workable truce? Like him and his rage? Little bird . . . if I know him, you know him_

He bade her farewell at the castle front, kissed her hand, fingered the spot where he had placed her favor and strode off, face beaming. 

She stood there long after he disappeared. She stood there until Myranda found her, linked arms with her and drew her away, chattering wittily all the while about this man and that man.

What did it mean to give your favor to a man in front of a heart tree?

**Author's Note:**

> I thank sweeticeandfiresunray for giving me the seeds for the first chapter of this story. Ser Byron = Sandor Clegane  
jager = diamond shape <> turned north south  



End file.
